Technology and Governance: Enabling Participatory Democracy

Several factors and dimensions are taken into consideration which influences the definition and scope of e-governance. Here ‘e’ implies technology driven governance. By application of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for the delivery of government services, exchange of information and services becomes efficient. Here exchange and flow of information takes place at three levels- 1) Government to consumer (G2C) 2) Government to business (G2B), and 3) Government to government (G2G) The perspective of e-governance is the “use of technologies that both help governing and have to be governed”. In order to understand debate and analyze the concept of e-governance and how its contours have changed, we first need to recognize e-democracy. It is a process and structures that encompass all forms of electronic interaction between the elected government and the citizenry. E-democracy as a concept and practice precedes participatory democracy which has been defined (Kramer, 1972) as that process that emphasizes broader participation in governance operation. Thus e-governance is conditioned on the fact that there exists a democratic political system and it involves a participatory framework of governance. This paper will look at the changing paradigm of e-governance through three broad questions- 1) Has ICT enabled civic engagement and initiated public opinion in this developing economy 2) Has it succeeded in reversing apparent defects in the electoral system 3) Has ICT lead to the spread of information from the state to the society